Well, that about clears it up for me. Does this not disqualify Steinem from writing the first words of an otherwise serious book about the Muslim world? And if not, why so? When given the chance to denounce the obvious causes of misery in the region, Ms. Steinem instead chose to prevaricate with the fourth-rate sociology for which she has long been known. After whetting our palettes with that amuse-bouche, she serves her delicacy:

“Why is it that the oldest cultures so rarely create a hierarchy by separating ‘masculine’ from ‘feminine,’ mind from body, intellect from emotion, humans from nature?”

To the Gloria Steinems of the world, all non-Western people are the same and must be standardized to fit a pre-fabricated meta-narrative. Details be damned: the problem with the world is that there are just too many Westerners spoiling the soup. Ironically, the contributors to this volume would disagree, as do some of its admirers. On the rear of the book, for instance, is a laudatory blurb from Azar Nafisi, author of the brilliant Reading Lolita in Tehran and a writer who transcends the terms “left” and “right” while honorably repudiating the whackos of both sides. One wonders why a writer of obvious skill and depth was passed over for a droning has-been of dubious expertise.

Once you take it as a given that non-Western problems invariably have Western origins, you forfeit any claim to know what makes a truly stable political culture. Building an open society is hard work. Oddly, both radical leftists and nation-building Wilsonians seem to agree that democracy is in some way contingent on Western civilization: the former believe it cannot occur in the presence of it, the latter that it cannot occur in the absence of it. Both are, in the final analysis, woefully unprepared to deal with real problems and real people. Both see humans as mere pieces on Adam Ferguson’s chessboard: automata reacting to materialist forces, or automata in need of being moved by enlightened idealists. The purveyors of bloodless sociology thus can never be counted on to produce anything other than bloody misery. That someone like Gloria Steinem is still considered an appropriate choice to pronounce on human rights is one of the reasons why the dreams referred to in this book’s title may well remain unrealized.

Robert Wargas is a contributor to PJ Media. A native of Long Island, he was educated at the City University of New York and Yale University, and has also written for The Daily Telegraph of London and The Weekly Standard.
Outside of opinion writing, he has worked as a professional historian for a major research laboratory and university, documenting the history of biotechnology since the 1970s. He has also reported for both weekly and daily newspapers, including Newsday.
He maintains a personal blog/website at robertwargas.org. Follow him on Twitter @RobertWargas

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1.
Fail Burton

I’m not sure why “Arab Spring” is a naive term. It may not be a Spring of hope to us, but it is to Egypt. The fact is it is no longer a dictatorship but a country where people vote. So they fail as Westerners; why wouldn’t they, they’re a different culture. They’re not Westerners.

The Muslim Brotherhood and salafis didn’t seize power, they were voted in. The MB President won an extremely narrow vote, but a vote nonetheless.

From here on in, if Egypt has a Bill of Rights or no, a Constitution that is religious or no, it will be their decision, based on their culture. If they’re still stupid (in our eyes) that’s one thing, but at least it’s not one guy calling the shots. Before Muburak, anyone could be treated like a gay there.

If gays are discriminated in Egypt, at least there’s a mechanism in place that might lead out. Before there was none. We used to have Jim Crow. I doubt we thought much of other countries taking us to the cleaners on that one in 1960. If we’d had a dictatorship in place, Jim Crow would never have been dismantled until the dictatorship had been taken out. How would getting rid of the dictator have been an “American Winter?” Not changing and not being able to change are two different things.

Care to revisit your comment now that Morsi has declared himself dictator in all but name?

For what it’s worth, I agree with you that an Islamic democracy will not resemble a Western one because the cultures are too different. However, part of the difference will lie in the truth that Islamic religious law, Shari’a, does not lend itself to self-determination through voting. It is an autocratic, top-down system. The people of Egypt may very well have had their one and only meaningful vote.

Discrimination against gays, women, whomever you pick matters in the big picture. Just by creating the perception that Republicans were anti everything we now have to deal with 4 more years.

It matters to the health of the overall competative economy in a big way. Egypt cannot afford to lose that.

Israel could not afford to lose the efforts of anyone in its early days. There is some controversy now about the Haredim, that aside for a moment. Morsi has in one sweep eliminated the judiciary. He did this on the heels of proving himself key to “resolving the cycle of violence between Israel and Gaza”.

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
…
And I get on my knees and pray
We won’t get fooled again

Yes, it is indeed a pity that Egypt didn’t turn into the US after their revolution. What’s wrong with these people? Have we not shown them the way with our shining example? I guess not every country can be the Exceptional Nation.

Hate to be all cynical but are we sure these essays were written by “real” Arabs who have actually experienced the “Spring”? It’s just that we’ve been burnt so many times before and when I hear brave, gay, anonymous, emotional and well-written with a forward by Gloria Steinem it kinda sets off my internal alarm.

I’m not saying it can’t be legitimate but I find when things like this work out so perfectly, it’s best to view them with a gimlet eye.

I wish people wouldn’t basically equate being “gay” with being a woman or being black. There is no logical comparison and so demeans women and blacks. Being “gay” means choosing to engage in immoral sexual aberrations, while being black or female does not involve such choice. Also, a homosexual mind in a heterosexual body, like a (say) female mind in a male body, is a sure sign that something went wrong somewhere, is a sure sign of a disorder (a commonsense position taken by the APA for decades until it was corrupted by “political correctness”). And we know that it is irrational and immoral to treat disorders as though they were not disorders. The whole “gay rights” (sad wrongs) movement is regressive and needs to be opposed. Let’s progress not regress!

One can hide one’s sexual inclinations–sometimes. One can’t change them. During the millennia when homosexuality was a capital offense (until 1828 in Britain and to this very day in Iran and Saudi Arabia) there were always homosexuals. Would anyone simply choose homosexuality and risk one’s life in order to be annoying?
Judaism was defanged by the Talmud. Christianity was defanged by the Enlightenment. The only doctrines that have kept their fangs are Marxism and Islam.

RE: the Gloria Steinham’s and their ilk, it is always utterly astonishing how, when the Western left is confronted with what Marx would’ve called “the inherent contradictions of (their ideology)”, namely the conflict between the values of the Western left, and the values of non-western, non-white peoples who that are in contradiction, they WILL choose the “sacred other” EVERY SINGLE TIME, and hurl their own leftist values over the side without a second thought.

It’s unfathomable. I remember a Norwegian “Minister of Women’s Rights” or some such, being asked about the proponderance of rapes by immigrant young men on Norwegian women, essentially saying “Well, we live in a multi-cultural society and we have to be aware, blah blah blah….” Translation: “Well, Helga, if you weren’t sashaying down the Trondheim boulevard in that short skirt of yours, this wouldn’t have happened, would it??”

In Berkley: QUIT…. Queers Undermining Israeli Terror. I’m sorry, which side has gay memebers of parliment, and which side kills them? I forget.

Again and again, the left will fight Americans and Westerners (conservatives) tooth and claw for A, B, and C…. but let a non-white immigrant take issue with those very things, and they will grovel before them, apologizing for their “judgementalism” or whatever other kind of masturbatory self-abasement will get them off at them moment with the magnificence of their own “tolerance”.

EVERY TIME they will make this choice, EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And given that that is the case, what DOES that make their true agenda. Gay Rights? Women’s empowerment? Don’t think so….. if that were true, the phenomena I speak of would never happen. Yet it ALWAYS happens. So those are NOT the true agendas here. It is in fact something else.

“Liberal democracy” means, in realistic terms, the ability of a “liberal” elite to dictate to the rest of the people what their societal norms should be. The Arab Spring’s democratic movement has not brought liberal democracy to the Middle East any more than genuine democracy would have ever brought liberalism’s societal norms to the West. Given globalism’s cultural reach, however, there are still things we can learn from Islamic societies. For instance, Justices Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor would all look better if they traded in their black robes for a burqa.